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Does the Whole Foods boycott stand a chance?

August 21, 2009 | 9:25
am

Poor old Whole Foods Market. As if that "Whole Paycheck" joke wasn't mean enough, now there are lots of shoppers who say they won't go there to buy things anymore.

To recap: On Aug. 11, the Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece by the company's chief executive, John Mackey, in which he spoke against deeper government involvement in the nation's healthcare. mericans, he said, should be responsible for their own health. Like, for example, by eating healthy food (of the kind Whole Foods sells).

"While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment," Mackey wrote.

That editorial led to a call for a Whole Foods boycott by a group called (aptly enough) Boycott Whole Foods. It says its membership now stands at more than 20,000. Read more here.